What does it take to win the “Worst Game” award in Game Dev Story

game-dev-story

I was curious to see if I could win the "Worst Game" award. It is surprisingly difficult. My typical approach is:

  • Hire the worst employee I can find and fire the rest of my staff.
  • Never train or level up my staff.
  • Pick the worst people available for use in proposal, graphics, and sound challenges. Burn them out.
  • Use Speed mode to develop the game.
  • Use unpopular and low-level types and genres
  • fail Boost challenges to create more bugs
  • Ship immediately at 100% without fixing any bugs

I had a game that got 13 points from the reviewers and was released with so many bugs that it got pulled off the market and I had to pay refunds to customers. That wasn't enough to win the award.

My "best" worst game fell victim to a power outage at about 85% complete. All the stats were below 20 and graphics was below 10. It got a total of 9 points from the game reviewers. (2/2/3/2). That wasn't enough to win the award.

What does it take? I'm certain at this point that you can't win it by accident, but is it winnable at all?

Best Answer

From my experience, the awards show is kind of random. I know Polish, Critical Score, Stats, etc. help increase chances of winning awards. What I did to get this award was save the game a few months before the awards show and return to the save and keep trying. Eventually I got the Worst Game "Award".

I was lucky in my attempts that it didn't take me too long but who knows how long it could take for some people. I know this may not be the most efficient method but it did eventually work for me.